• Orchid NuSound - A3D, DSP
• TB Daytona - SLS
• TB Montego - A3D, DSP
• Sonic Storm - A3D, DSP
• Shark Predator - A3D, DSP
• Monster Sound M80 - A3D, DSP
• Monster Sound MX200 - A3D, DSP
• CLabs PCI64 - QSound

Remember a few years back when the Sound Blaster was the only game in town? Then along came a few upstarts like Media Vision and Turtle Beach.

These days choices are a little more complicated, and overall quality and reliability has increased greatly. Turtle Beach has two new PCI sound boards Daytona and Montego and Diamond has released two new versions also (M80 and MX200). Videologic is now in the act with a board based on the ESS Maestro-1, and Orchid has just released their NuSound PCI, based on the Aureal Vortex 8820 chipset. Creative Labs has finally released a PCI version of their AWE64, and Ubisoft should have a PCI version of their excellent Game Theatre board soon.

This kind of expansion is GOOD NEWS™! However, its complicated by the fact that some of these chipsets integrate DSPs, or Digital Signal Processors, and some do not. What this means is that you may buy a PCI sound board expecting to get the full benefit of hardware acceleration under DirectSound and DirectSound3d, but NOT actually get that performance gain at all! Tsk, tsk. We can't let that happen! Its time to get informed as to what chips are riding the bus in the express lane, and which are taking the tour through the small towns on the way home.

Get on the Bus

ISA has been with us forever, but 1998 may see its obituary. Moving to the PCI bus and DirectSound under WIN95 means fewer hassles and better quality. If your sim of choice is a true WIN95 game, installation and use becomes virtually painless, and sound quality improves relative to the chipset and programmers choices. Since Plug'n'Play is far more reliable with PCI boards than with ISA boards, the future has arrived!

A sound board sitting in an ISA slot is talking to your CPU at.. would you believe 8 MHz? That means where a game uses sophisticated sound... 24 channels in stereo or positional with CD quality, for example, it takes more CPU power to monitor the montage, power that sim fans desperately need to reserve for gameplay. And if your ISA board also lacks the ability to do the processing onboard, instead delegating that task to your CPU, you might as well be handing the string section over to the control of ten monkeys; you will be waiting a long time to get that sound right!

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Furthermore, a resident DSP (digital signal processor) on boards like the Monster Sound, Sonic Storm or TB Montego means on board channel mixing and processing; thats another saving on the CPU and it gives software designers even more flexibility in the sound department, with speech, multiple sounds and multiple sound channels all happening at the same time WITHOUT the sound board having to tap your CPU on the shoulder for some attention. Consider for a moment what has to happen to keep you happy in your virtual F22...

At any one time, you must hear engine sounds, warning sounds, voice interaction, explosions, and if its your preference, music too. Some of these sounds must vary in intensity and in position. And your system must do this while also processing a huge amount of data in relation to flight model, physics model, ballistics model, position information of everything in the sky AND the AI of every virtual pilot! Whew.

You NEED a DSP. Add a digital signal processor on a PCI bus and its like a Greyhound compared to a 1963 Volkswagon van: the bigger bus is faster, more comfortable and can move many more people to the destination at the same time. Believe it or not, CPU utilization without a DSP can be as high as 8% compared to a 4% average for a DSP board on the PCI bus. But unfortunately, not even a DSP onboard guarantees DirectSound acceleration.

This Ain't Your Fathers Potato Chip

When I grew up "Old Dutch" was about the only name in potato chips. Now we have LAYS, Nalleys, and half a dozen other major names. The same holds true for sound hardware: used to be the sound scene was dominated by Creative Labs. It wasn't long before Media Vision and Turtle Beach arrived and generally surpassed CL in quality. Now we have a huge variety of boards out there, but there are only a few main chipset makers.

At the moment there are at least five major chipsets involved in the PCI sound board scene: Ensoniq's ES1370, Analog Devices' 2181 and 1843, Aureals Vortex 8820, S3 with their SonicVibes, and the Maestro ESS-1.

Each of these chipsets has their own strengths and weaknesses, but the scale seems to be weighted toward Aureals positional sound technology which is directly supported by two of these chipsets and emulated by a third. With the ability to generate convincing positional audio in real time with only two speakers and exceptionally clean and crisp sound, A3D is rapidly emerging as a new standard.

The Vortex 8820 is one of the new chips that directly support A3D, and I've already had my hands on three boards that use this chip: the Turtle Beach Montego, the Shark Predator 3d, and the Orchid NuSound. The Vortex 8820 is a 300 MIPS (million instructions/sec) digital signal processor. Unfortunately, according to Aureal the cards using this chipset do not fully accelerate DirectSound and DirectSound3D in WIN95/98, even though they do audio mixing in hardware.

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